


The Weird Neighbour

by quiffedphil



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Dan Howell Is Not A Youtuber, Getting Together, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, youtuber Phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 12:50:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9727583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiffedphil/pseuds/quiffedphil
Summary: Dan has just moved into a new flat when he has an odd and awkward exchange with his new neighbour who then makes a YouTube video about it. Dan's friend finds the video and sends it to Dan who vows to get his revenge by being the weirdest, strangest neighbour that this Phil guy would ever meet. Turns out he got more than revenge.





	

Dan was out of breath and a sweaty mess before he’d even started carrying the boxes up the stairs. He was trying to carry two boxes, stacked one on top of the other, up to the front door of his new flat. It wasn’t going well. He was eternally grateful that he lived on the first floor and not any higher up, sure, the ground floor would have been best, but sadly neither of those flats were for sale.

So it was with a heavy heart, thoughts of takeaway pizza, and curls beginning to form on his forehead that Dan started climbing the stairs to the next floor up. He hadn’t met his neighbour across the hall yet, but he was hoping it was a little old granny; someone who was definitely not loud, rude or a secret psychopath. Then again, who’s to say a little old granny couldn’t be all three of those things?

“Fuck.” He muttered to himself as he dumped the boxes on his dusty, old doormat that the previous owner had left behind. Why hadn’t he accepted his friend’s advice and just hired someone to do all the hard work, he would have been so much better off that way, but no, Dan was too stingy and independent. He insisted that he could manage to move himself, he was regretting that decision severely.

He was glaring at the boxes as though everything was their fault when a sudden yelp made him jump. It wasn’t even a normal yelp, it was more of a startled mouse noise. It was high pitched and the guy who had emitted its voice seemed to break in the middle. Dan was more surprised by the fact that he hadn’t heard the guy coming out of his apartment.

He was young with black hair swooped to the side in a fringe not too unlike Dan’s and skin so pale he could have been a freaking Disney princess. He definitely did not look like a sweet old granny.

“Hi, I'm Phil, you must be my new neighbour.” Phil said and Dan could detect a northern twang, Phil wasn’t originally a Londoner it seemed.

“No, I mean yes, I'm your new neighbour.” Dan said awkwardly, mentally slapping himself. Why did he say no? He literally had no reason at all to say no to that statement. He was Phil’s new neighbour. Now the guy was going to be really suspicious and think that Dan was trying to break into the place. Dan realised the silence was stretching on just a bit too long and tried to think of something to say. “Sorry, hi, my name is Dan.”

“Nice to meet you.” Phil said, but he didn’t seem sure about that.

“I’m not trying to break in, don’t worry.” Dan said making matters worse rather than better.

“Right, because if you were trying to break in you would tell me?”

“Hold on a sec.” Dan muttered and dug through his pockets, searching for his wallet.

“I don’t want any money,” Phil said quickly, “you don’t have to pay me off to stop me from tattling, and I don’t want to get involved in any gang business.”

“Oh my god, you Spork, here.” Dan thrust his driver’s licence into Phil’s hands.

“That’s nice Dan, but I already have a driver’s licence.” Phil muttered, as he tried to hand it back.

“No, no, I'm proving I'm not breaking in.” Dan insisted. “See, that’s me; Dan Howell. There’s my picture, and there’s a heap of personal crap that I probably shouldn’t be showing a complete stranger.”

“I was just joking, you know? I didn’t actually think that you were trying to break in, there is literally a key in the door.” Phil said.

“Huh.” Dan muttered, actually taking back the licence when it was offered the next time.

 “Anyway.” Phil said, smiling carefully and taking a step back. “I’m on my way to a meeting, so I’ll probably see you in the passing at some point.”

“Yeah.” Dan agreed.

He watched as Phil practically ran away from him and sighed, that was a brilliant first impression. He pretty much made his new neighbour believe that he was a burglar, a gang member, and the most strange and awkward human alive. To be fair the last one was pretty accurate, but he definitely wasn’t a thief or a gang member.

Dan sighed and promised himself that he would try to resolve the misunderstanding later, he was going to be living here for a long time, so he would have plenty of opportunities to fix the situation with Phil.

Dan spent that night unpacked the gazillion boxes of crap that he had brought with him, halfway through the unpacking process he realised that his mum had obviously added a few items to his boxes, things that he didn’t realise he would have to own for himself like lightbulbs and a tin opener. Who thought of buying those things? They were just always _there._

By the time Dan had found his pillow and duvet and actually built his bed it was nearing three in the morning. He felt a little bit guilty about that as his neighbour – Phil, he reminded himself – was probably trying to sleep and Dan was keeping him awake with all the banging and clattering of furniture.

As Dan lay in bed, he texted his friend about his awkward encounter with Phil, knowing that it would give her a good laugh, before deciding to finally settle down and sleep. He had a long day ahead of himself tomorrow and it was already really late, or early depending on how he looked at it.

+

Dan saw Phil in the passing but they only exchanged a few words over the next few days and it wasn’t until the following weekend that something happened. Dan received an odd text from his friend; it had a link in it but nothing else. So, of course, Dan threw caution to the wind and clicked the link, not even bothering to check whether it was a potential virus or not. 

It opened to YouTube, Dan frowned, why was he being sent YouTube videos?

_“Hey Guys!”_

Holy Jesus Christ on a fucking motorboat that was Phil. That was literally his neighbour, the guy who thought that he was a robber. He made YouTube videos. Real videos that were posted online for real people to watch and comment on. He was pretty popular by the looks of it too, he was nearly at four million subscribers. Dan was impressed, and understood slightly why the guy was a bit sceptical of him, after all he could have been an insane fan who was stalking his home address.

_“How are you guys? I don’t know why I’m asking this is a one way conversation, unless you tell me down in the comments how you’ve been!”_

The Phil in the video was bright and quirky, he spoke quickly and he was animated and appeared to be really passionate about the topics he was speaking about. It was interesting to see this side of his neighbour and he was impressed that his friend had managed to figure out that AmazingPhil was his neighbour Phil but it didn’t really explain why he had been sent a video. Surely a quick ‘hey your neighbour is a popular YouTuber called AmazingPhil’ would have done.

_“In other news, I have a new neighbour!”_

What now?

_“Yeah, weird right? I’ve been joking about that apartment being empty for so long, I was genuinely starting to think it was cursed!”_

Dan frowned, his flat was most definitely not cursed. It was perfect. Unless you counted the pipes in the ceiling that started clanging at two in the morning every damn night, but it was an old building. It was completely understandable. It was just the pipes, definitely not the girl from _The Ring._

_“So yeah, I have a feeling that it’s going to be pretty interesting. We had our first obligatory awkward meeting in the hallway which went a little something like this.”_

Dan watched with a mixture of horror and amusement as the smarmy bastard appeared on his laptop screen with his hair brushed over to the opposite side and wearing a black shirt. Phil then proceeded to completely recreate their first conversation causing Dan an insufferable amount of cringe. He had called him a Spork, he’d somehow managed to forget that he had done that and here Phil was remembering it perfectly and reminding Dan of his inability to socialise with other human beings.

_“So yeah, my neighbour might not actually be my neighbour, he may be some crazy gang member on the run from the police who found an empty flat and decided to break in and squat there until the heat dies down. Don’t worry though, because he has shown me his driver’s licence so if he appears as wanted on the morning news I know to call the police.”_

Bastard.

_“I’ll keep my eye out for gang symbols tattooed in strange places, guys.”_

Dan snorted at the mental thought of himself having a tattoo, he was way too indecisive to make a decision to get art printed on his body permanently, and he just would not suit that sort of thing either.

_“I still can't believe I got called a Spork though, I must admit it’s the most creative thing I’ve ever been called.” Phil said with a laugh that made his tongue poke out from between his teeth. “I think I just attract crazy people though, remember the Tea People? Oh, and the Holy Mother?”_

Dan frowned who were they? Also, he wasn’t crazy and he was slightly offended by the insinuation that he was. He watched the video until the very end and stared blankly at the screen until another video started up which made him blink before slamming the laptop closed. Damn auto play.

He had a few options, he could pretend he hadn’t seen the video and continue to have awkward exchanges in the hallway with Phil or he could march across and confront the little shit, he could call him out on mentioning him in the video and demand that he deleted it. Except Dan was never mentioned by name, so even if Dan did do that, Phil could claim that he wasn’t talking about Dan – even though he obviously was – and there would be no proof otherwise.

Plus Dan didn’t really want to alienate his only acquaintance in the building, and if he was being completely honest, a tiny little, itsy bitsy piece of him had actually enjoyed watching that video. Even if Phil was a smarmy bastard for calling him out like that.

Which left ignoring it, which Dan wasn’t too keen on either. He wanted to rile Phil up a little more, but without letting him know that he knew.

An idea popped into Dan’s head so suddenly that he was aware of why cartoon characters had a light bulb appear above their head, it was literally as though someone had flicked on a light inside his mind and shown him a completely new idea. It was an insane thing to consider, it was ridiculous. There was no way he would get away with it, and if he managed to keep a straight face then there was always the chance that Phil wouldn’t rise to the bait.

He wanted to play it up. Phil had said in the video that he attracted crazy people and Dan had therefore been referred to as one of the said crazy people, so why not go along with it? He could be the completely batshit crazy neighbour and that way Phil would obliviously continue to make his videos not knowing that Dan knew, and Dan would be able to get revenge in the most insane and creative ways possible.

+

Two weeks later Dan sat smirking to himself as he saw a video titled ‘MY NEIGHBOUR IS INSANE’ in his subscription box on YouTube, just as he had expected.

_“Hey Guys! How was your valentine’s day? I hope that you all ate heaps of chocolate, even if you're single you should’ve bought yourself something nice because you're the most important person in your life. Was that too cheesy? Probably!”_

Dan grinned at the nerd on his screen and shook his head.

_“Anyways, I'm sure you’ve all seen the title of this video and are wondering what new developments have occurred. Well, there’s been a lot. First of all, I was actually joking in my last video and I thought that the weirdness with my neighbour was just because of nerves y’know? Meeting new people and all that?”_

_“No.”_

Dan raised an eyebrow at the extreme camera zoom and the elongated ‘no’. Bring it, Phil.

_“He is actually insane. Did you guys know that he gets his mail delivered to my apartment if he knows he’s not going to be in? I don’t mean like the postie brings it over and leaves it with me for him to collect, no, I mean that whenever he orders something from amazon, he will put his name on the package and my address!”_

Dan snorted, he’d done it a lot too, the post man came at a ridiculously early time and Dan was not a morning person, so why not just make Phil wake up bright and early? That way he got his revenge and his sleep, it was the best of both worlds.

_“Seriously, what the hell? Who does that? Who orders their mail to their neighbour’s flat and doesn’t even ask first? I wasn’t really sure what to do at first so I called PJ and asked him what to do and he just laughed. So then I called Martyn and he laughed. I'm lost here guys, what should I do?”_

_“He doesn’t even acknowledge that he’s doing it either, like I’ll take his packages over to him in the afternoon and he’s all like ‘thanks’ but there’s no apology or asking of my permission? Just a quick thank you and a short conversation. I don’t really know how to ask him why he’s doing it or how to tell him to stop, so I think this is something I might have to live with for a while. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the postie insists on knocking on my door at eight in the morning every morning.”_

Dan snickered to himself, looks like Phil wasn’t going to confront him any time soon, which made it all the sweeter as he could keep going for as long as he wanted.

 _“If you think that’s not bad enough then hold your horses because it gets worse. Over the past two weeks, he has come to my door at half eleven at night and asked if I have any tabasco sauce_ eleven _times. That’s right. Eleven. I don’t even know why he kept coming back, I told him after the first time that I didn’t like tabasco sauce and therefore didn’t own any, but for some reason he just insisted on trying another ten times.”_

 _“It’s not all bad though, because in the short conversations we’ve had I did learn that he likes_ Muse. _So of course I was like ‘same’ and we always have that to fall back on if things get awkward.”_

Dan smiled through the rest of the video as Phil chatted about the other various things he had gotten up to throughout the last couple of weeks and once it was finished he clicked the little like button. His plan was going perfectly, he just had to wait a little longer and move on to stage two. Stage two was dangerous.

+

Yet another week passed and to Dan’s surprise Phil had retaliated. Dan was woken at a ridiculous hour one morning, just to be handed a parcel by the post man which was confusing as all of Dan’s parcels were now delivered at Phil’s address, but he accepted it and sleepily stumbled into the kitchen to make a coffee. Once he was more awake he took the time to peer at the address label only to find that it was Phil’s parcel but it had his own address on it. The copycat had literally stolen Dan’s idea.

So it began that all of Dan’s parcels were delivered to Phil and all of Phil’s to Dan. It was just an accepted part of their life now, neither of them willing to tell the other to stop, both as stubborn as the other. It reached a point where Dan accidentally slept through the postman’s knocking and ended up calling the post office to get Phil’s parcel redelivered – to Dan’s address – the next day.

Dan realised it was time to step it up to stage two.

+

‘MY WEIRD NEIGHBOUR CLIMBED IN MY WINDOW?’

Dan grinned to himself and clicked on the video.

_“Hey Guys! Uh, this is a weird one, yeah even I’m admitting that this video is odd. I know that you guys are enjoying the tales of my life with my strange, weird neighbour and I’m back with another instalment. He climbed in my window.”_

_“I’ll just give you a moment to let that sink in. so it turns out that he locked his door, left the keys in the door and walked out of the block house. He then realised what he’d done but by that point it was too late and he couldn’t get back in, so instead of ringing the buzzer like any normal sane person would have done, he decided to climb the tree that is outside my bedroom window. At five in the morning.”_

_“I got the fright of my life when I opened my blinds only to see a six foot three guys perched on a tree and grinning like a psychopath. I actually debated closing the blinds again, don’t judge me guys, I thought I was still dreaming, but I didn’t, I opened the window and let him in and I was glad he didn’t fall because I didn’t want to have to deal with calling an ambulance.”_

_“He explained the story to me and somehow managed to explain climbing the tree in a way that made complete sense at the time, but now I’m looking back and I’m pretty sure he’s insane.”_

_“That’s not the weirdest thing though, what’s even stranger is the fact that we’ve become friends. I know right? It’s so bizarre, but we have heaps in common and after he started turning up at my flat with an anime DVD and popcorn at random times, we were forced to bond. Don’t judge me! It was anime and popcorn!”_

_“So yeah, we are actually friends now, it’s scary how much we have in common, we could practically be the same person. Except his eyes and hair are brown and he dresses like a walking funeral. Oh god. I’ve just realised that when he finds out I’m a YouTuber he might see this video, and all the other ones I’ve made that have called him weird. I might have to apologise for that in the future but he can't complain too much. He is weird. He climbed a tree instead of ringing a buzzer!”_

+

‘MY FLATMATE IS INSANE’

_“Hey Guys! So if you follow me on twitter then you’ll know that me and Dan have moved in together, or rather he’s moved in with me.” Phil said excitedly._

_“That’s because my flat was haunted, the girl from_ The Ring _obviously lived in the ceiling and was just waiting for a chance to drop down and murder me while I was sleeping.” Dan interjected from somewhere off camera._

_“That’s Dan, by the way. He’s behind the camera editing my last video, by the time this one goes up you will have seen the one that Dan is editing for me, videoception or what? Anyways, I taught him everything he knows.” Phil smiled._

_“Phil you spoon, I literally work in video editing and software production.” Dan sighed, it was obvious that this was a conversation that had been had many times._

_“I taught him everything.” Phil repeated to the camera. “You may be wondering why I let such a strange person into my flat and to put it simply, it’s because he has the entire Studo Ghibli boxset. I couldn’t say no to that now could I?”_

_“Jesus fucking Christ on a tricycle Phil, that was the only reason.” Dan snickered._

_“Hey! No swearing, there’s babies watching.”_

_“It’s ok, you bleeped it. They wouldn’t have known I was swearing if you hadn’t said anything. I could have been saying pancake or something.” Dan said._

_“Why would I bleep pancake?”_

_“To try and make people think I'm evil.”_

_“You are evil.” Phil said fondly. “Getting back on track though, everyone seemed to want to see my weird not-neighbour-now, so here we go.”_

_“What I wasn’t warned about this, I look like trash.” Dan said quickly._

_“You look fine. Here he is guys.” Phil turned the camera to show a sleepy looking Dan sitting slouched over a laptop, wearing Phil’s Adventure Time hoodie, his hair curled from his very recent shower._

_“Get that thing out my face, you Spork.” Dan said, but a soft smile was playing on his lips and the words fell on deaf ears._

_“So this was just a quick video to introduce you guys to my new flatmate and boyfriend, Dan. You guys made jokes and wrote your fanfiction but here we are.”_

_“You said you were going to introduce us slowly, there was nothing slow about that.” Dan said_

_“They all shipped us anyway.” Phil shrugged._

_“He’s kidnapped me, send help.” Dan joked._

_“Shut up, we all know you're the insane one.” Phil snickered. “So if you liked this then please give it a thumbs up, don’t forget to subscribe and ding my bell. Also leave a comment trying to peer pressure Dan into starting a channel. I'm sure that if enough of us try then he’ll make videos eventually. I’ll see you guys next week, gooooodbye!”_

“You are a Spork.” Dan smirked once the camera was off.

“I think I have Stockholm syndrome.” Phil sighed.

“Wow, love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> this idea was floating around in my head, i had to write it out. i dont know if i did the idea justice, probably not smh
> 
> come talk to me on tumblr @ existentialcatwhiskers and if you liked this fic check out some of my other phanfics :)
> 
> I know the ending seems a little rushed but that's because I'm considering making this a two-shot and putting in phil's point of view of all of dans shenanigans and finding out that dan knew the who time. Would you be interested in that?


End file.
